Mechanical engineers Daniel Preston and Faye Yap of Rice University have devised a method of using dead spiders to delicately grasp small object and other tiny animals.

I’m not sure if I shouldn’t mark this one as NSFW X).

I don’t often feel like science went too far, but necrobiotics might be a step too far… I tend to agree with this take against it.

  • Flying Squid
    1·
    1 year ago

    From your ‘take against it’ link-

    Then, why stop at spiders? Would installing a nervous system shunt in mammals be the next step?

    That’s some real slippery slope fallacious thinking. Clearly any next step would not be even close to that if such a thing were even practical. And we do far worse things to lab mammals anyway.

    • CamilleMellomOPM
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yeah I mean sure it’s a slippery slope in that argument, but I’m just not really for killing spider to make funny looking actuators. I belive that the application that they highlight (capturing insect and microelectonics) are a bit of a reach, as in their solution is not super much better. I think kirigami or active entanglement are more useful and less cruel.

      For lab mammals I agree but, for now, we do not have a better way. I know people working in pharma and co, and they hate it but don’t really have a better solution. Apparently, organoids are becoming really big as an alternative so it’s nice too see that the science is trying to move away from animal testing. Overall the scientific field usually tries to become less cruel I would hope, and I think that necrobotics is the opposite of that.

      • Flying Squid
        1·
        1 year ago

        I guess I just can’t get too broken up over experimenting with dead spiders. I have my doubts that it will have great utility anyway.